As a scholar of Latin American politics at the University of Sydney, I have sometimes struggled to explain to my Australian students the phenomenon of populism.
How do you get intelligent young people, who have grown up in a country where politics is basically reasonable, to understand the appeal of a leader who claimed that Martian civilisation was destroyed by capitalism (Hugo Chavez, former president of Venezuela), who recorded a campaign jingle about himself called The Chinese Man who Dances (Alberto Fujimori, former president of Peru), or who first rose to fame for his participation in a military dictatorship and called his philosophy "Justice-ism" (Juan Peron, former president of Argentina)?
James Loxton
University of Sydney
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